Growing in the Garden Goes National

New Curriculum for Grades 4-6

Thoughts About Garden-based Learning

We are so pleased that the National Gardening Association reviewed Growing in the Garden and has identified it as one of the top new youth gardening programs in the United States. They are offering it through their Gardening With Kids 2003 catalog. We are proud to be part of the great collection of gardening resources featured in the catalog and on the NGA’s kidsgardening.com website.

Kidsgardening.com opens the door to several opportunities that can inspire you to try new things or encourage you to build your gardening programs. A fifteen-minute trip to kidsgardening.com is time well spent.

Since Growing in the Garden has had a positive response at regional and national conferences and from people all over the United States, the six-hour training sessions will soon be offered nationally. Training sessions motivate participants, connect communities and resources, remind teachers how fun and affective it is to do hands-on learning, demonstrate how you can develop life skills and learn practical and up-to-date content matter at the same time, and how to do all of that and still accomplish standards and benchmarks in a variety of subject matter areas. For more information, contact Janet Anderson at janeta@iastate.edu or return to this website after January 1, 2003.

New Curriculum for Grades 4-6

Students in grades four through six will understand the connection between themselves and where they live, demonstrating respect and responsibility for our planet Earth.” This is the goal statement written by the Extension 21 Food, Fiber, Environmental Science Design Team for the new curriculum titled Where We Live.

Specialists, teachers, and program leaders are writing and reviewing thirty lessons, which will be printed in pilot form by May 2002. Pilot sites for the 2002-2003 school year, include Waterloo, Dubuque, Davenport, and possibly two other locations. The lessons are based upon common standards and benchmarks in social studies, Iowa history, science, language arts, reading, math, music, and art. The fun hands-on lessons challenge students to think about the land and the food where they live.

Growing in the Garden and Where We Live comprise the ISU Extension 4-H Youth Development Food, Fiber, Environmental Science school enrichment curriculum for K-6. The after-school program curriculum, Growing in the Garden: Outdoor Classrooms for Young Gardeners, will also be reviewed and expanded into a K-6 program.

Click here to read the working draft of the thematic scope and sequence including lesson titles and concepts for Where We Live.

We're in the process of gathering anecdotal information and evaluations to assess the outcome of Growing in the Garden after it's first two years. This Web site feature will include results of our findings and summaries of other studies done with children and garden-based learning. If you have information that would be a good addition to this portion of our Web site or to the overall evaluation of Growing in the Garden and garden-based learning, please contact Janet Anderson at janeta@iastate.edu or ISU Extension 4-H Youth Development, 33 Curtiss Hall, Ames, IA 50011.

The following questions and responses reflect the usage of the in-school Growing in the Garden curriculum in ten Waterloo and Dubuque schools. It may help you plan your units for the next school year.

1. How did you use the lessons in Growing in the Garden? (all at once, pick and choose, thematically, etc.)

Two teachers chose several of the Growing in the Garden lessons to do in March and April. The rest of the teachers said they used most of the lessons throughout the year. Several teachers pulled out their teaching plans and showed how they fit Growing in the Garden lessons in with other science, social studies, history, reading, writing, and math curriculum. Everyone seemed to be using the children's books that accompany the curriculum.

Other examples of usage included:

• Life in the Garden lesson was used in the fall to start discussions on classifying animals.
• George Washington Carver went nicely with Black History Month.
• Thomas Jefferson fit into existing social studies and language arts lessons.
• George Washington Carver went nicely with Black History Month.
• Art teachers did Claude Monet, garden murals, collages, garden sculptures, steppers, bird & butterfly houses.
• Did nutrition lessons when EFNEP person came to the classroom.
• Did lessons that relate to annual field trips to John Deere, farms, museums, and so on.
• Used lessons with "Discover the Wonder;" "Carolina Biological Plant Growth and Development;" "Pyramid Connections (Dairy);" "Feeding the World in a Changing Climate;" a variety of reading, writing, social studies, math, and science programs; and with films available from local AEAs.
• Fit into Expedition, Pathways, Champs, TAG, Anthology, Character Counts programs.
• Used it to convince administration and partners to start or enlarge outdoor classrooms or gardens at or near several schools

• The lesson plans are all here (in the binder), they are well organized, the children's books are here, too.
• Hands-on lessons, notebook is teacher-friendly, the music
• The layout and lessons are fool proof, the kids are enthusiastic when they do the lessons
• This is a good way to do things, fun to do ice cream and other lessons at the end of the year
• Everything is tied together, fun things kids can do and figure out, hands-on, done for us, materials are easy to use, we can do this
• Pick up the book and the lessons are there, and they are very appropriate
• Hands-on activities, discussion set-up especially for reading the books, murals
• Student pages like "Designing Plants" and Dream Garden Mural, also fun to see in hall and next door
• Hands-on activities, easy format (2)

• More information on container gardening to do in the classroom
• Put (Growing in the Garden) together with other curriculum like environmental and nutrition coming into our schools.
• Keep doing as much hands-on as possible
• Add grant opportunities, help with grant writing
• It's been wonderful, I need more time to do it more thorough

This is only the beginning of the questions we presented on our classroom visits and in our written evaluations. We will present more questions and responses approximately every 60 days.

Janet Anderson
Extension 21 Food, Fiber, Environmental Science
Iowa State University Extension 4-H Youth Development